1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical contact, and more particularly to an electrical pin contact for mounting on a printed circuit board.
2. Description of Related Art
Electrical pin contacts are typically mounted to a printed circuit board for establishing electrical interconnections to the circuitry of the board. For example, one or more contacts can be mounted to a circuit board to provide test pin connections that can be probed for testing or troubleshooting the board. Pin contacts can also provide an interface for an electrical connector or other socket-type device to interconnect a board to other electronic components.
Electronic components, including pin contacts, are generally configured for mounting on a printed circuit board as either a surface mount component or a through-hole component. A surface mount component includes leads that are soldered directly to surface mount pads provided on the outer surfaces of the circuit board. Conventionally, the component leads are pressed into a layer of solder paste, which includes both solder and flux, deposited on the pads. Once the surface mount components are assembled to the circuit board, the board and components are heated to reflow the solder and form solder joints between the leads and pads.
A through-hole component includes elongated leads that are inserted into plated-through holes extending through the circuit board. Conventionally, the component leads are soldered to the plated-through holes using a wave soldering process that fills the holes with solder to electrically and mechanically connect the leads to the holes.
When a printed circuit board includes both surface mount components and through-hole components, separate manufacturing steps are typically required to solder the various components to the board. Generally, the surface mount components are first assembled and reflow soldered to the board with the through-hole components being subsequently assembled and wave soldered to the board. In addition to increasing the number of process steps, this process can impact the overall reliability of the board since the surface mount components and their solder joints are subjected to the thermal shock of the wave soldering process.
Surface mount pin contacts have been proposed for surface mount applications so that the pin contacts may be reflow soldered at the same time as the surface mount components. Surface mount pin contacts, however, tend to have less structural integrity than a through-hole contact. Additionally, the solder joint between the surface mount pad and the contact is at substantial risk to fail, since the contact typically includes no support structure that would distribute forces applied to the contact away from the solder joint. Surface mount electrical contacts used as test pins are particularly prone to structural and solder joint failures since they are typically subjected to relatively large forces when probed, grasped and interconnected during testing on a board. The lack of support structure also makes it difficult to maintain a surface mount contact precisely positioned on a circuit board during the assembly process.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved electrical contact and a method of mounting the electrical contact in a plated-through hole on a printed circuit board.